Polish Team Championship: How to beat a higher rated opponent

10/6/2012 – Four GMs, 13 IMs and few dozens other players gathered in Poronin, a beautiful mountain village, for the Polish First League, an eliminator to the Extra League. Czech IM Pawel Simacek (2477) and Ukrainian GM Orest Gritsak (2548) won the competition on the first board, scoring both 6/9. In wonderfully annotated games Piotr Kaim shows us the
narrow path to improvement in chess.

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Polish Team Championship: How to beat a higher rated opponent

Report by Piotr Kaim – photos by Olga Zajkowska

The Polish First League is composed of ten teams which play a round robin tournament
on six boards, including a mandatory board for women. The best two teams are
promoted to the Extra League, while the three at the bottom are relegated to
the Second League. This time the happy two included KSz Odrodzenie Kozuchow
and ASSz Miedz Legnica, while the unfortunate three were Polonia WSB Wroclaw,
ZMCh Polska YMCA Warszawa and KS AZS Politechniki Slaskiej Gliwice.

As far as individual results are concerned, Czech IM Pawel Simacek (2477) and
Ukrainian GM Orest Gritsak (2548), former national champion, came first equal
at the first board. However, it was a second board player, Polish GM Rafal Antoniewski
(2541), who showed the best rating performance. GM Antoniewski scored 7.5/9
and it gave him a 2653 result. WGM Katarzyna Toma (2290) won the women’s
board with 8/9, half a point ahead of WIM Edyta Jakubiec (2183).

GM Rafal Antoniewski showed no mercy for his board two opponents

The tournament was organized in a very competent way by Marian Sadzikowski.
As a result, the players enjoyed comfortable accommodation, an equally comfortable
playing hall as well as an assortment of side attractions, like a guided mountain
trip and a banquet accompanied by a folk band. Besides, Poronin is one of those
places where you would always like to play. Everywhere you look you see the
picturesque Tatra Mountains, and the view inspires big ideas.

The wonderfully picturesque playing venue

The analysis room, ready for the players – Polish beer included

Out of the 270 games played in the tournament, we have selected two. Both of
them follow the same pattern: an underdog beats a favorite, or in fact a heavy
favorite. In the first one IM Piotr Staniszewski (2419) crushed GM Tomasz Markowski
(2577), the player with the highest rating in the tournament and a former European
Championship bronze medal winner.

The following game includes an effort from your humble reporter. I was lucky
to beat a solid IM, and I believe the game is worth showing to ChessBase readers.
It starts with a properly played Benko Gambi,t and then there are entertaining
tactics followed by a highly interesting endgame.

See also

12/30/2017 – The "King Salman World Blitz & Rapid Championships 2017" in Riyadh from Decemer 26th to 30th. At the half way point of the Blitz Championship, the defending champ Sergey Karjakin leads with 9 / 11. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave is a half point back followed by Peter Svidler and a trio of Chinese: Wang, Ding and Yu on 8 / 11. In the Women's Pia Cramling has a full point lead with 9½ / 11. Watch live with Rounds 11 to 22 from 12:00 Noon CET (6:00 AM EST) on Saturday with commentary by E. Miroshnichenko & WGM K. Tsatsalashvili.

See also

12/6/2017 – Imagine this: you tell a computer system how the pieces move — nothing more. Then you tell it to learn to play the game. And a day later — yes, just 24 hours — it has figured it out to the level that beats the strongest programs in the world convincingly! DeepMind, the company that recently created the strongest Go program in the world, turned its attention to chess, and came up with this spectacular result.

Video

On this 60 mins video we are going to concentrate on a simple, very solid idea in the main line Scandinavian, which even Magnus Carlsen has used to win games. Black focusses on making his life easy in the opening and forces White to work very hard to get advantage – but it is doubtful if White can get an advantage. Club players are always on the lookout for effective, time-saving solutions and here we have just that. Accompany FIDE Senior Trainer and IM Andrew Martin on this 60 mins video. You can learn a new opening system in 60 mins and start to play it with confidence on the very same day!